A Balanced Budget in 2013?

Only if this guy's elected president...

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Measuring against gold reveals the true value of investments...

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Chaostan and the Fall of the US Empire

The big picture is changing fast...

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New Reasons to Buy Silver

Thinking of Buying Silver today? Find three more reasons here...

WE ONCE had an ongoing series in Big Gold called "1001 Reasons to Own Gold", says Jeff Clark, senior editor of Doug Casey's Big Gold newsletter.

The idea was that there were so many valid reasons to own the metal, I wanted to track and report on them all. And if you're now invested in the precious metals arena, you will also know there have been a myriad of bullish indicators for silver this year as well.

Here's a couple new reasons to own silver that a lot of mainstream investors probably aren't aware of...

Due to increased demand from industry and investors, silver exports from China are expected to drop about 40% this year. And that's actually an improvement; customs data show exports plunged almost 60% through the first eight months. China exported about 3,500 metric tonnes of silver in 2009, but has exported only 970 tonnes through August of this year.

What a lot of Westerners don't know is that China ended export "rebates" two years ago to stem the shipment of natural resources leaving the country. As a result of the regulation, silver exports decreased in 2009 but are nothing like what they're experiencing this year. In other words, the large drop in exports is a direct result of a huge increase in demand within China itself.

According to one Chinese banker, the spike in silver demand is coming from all areas – jewelry, investment, and industrial. In his words, it's led to a "physical market shortage in the Far East."

How important is this? China is the world's third largest producer of silver (after Peru and Mexico), so the amount of silver coming to the global marketplace this year will drop by more than 74 million ounces. This represents roughly 8.3% of total annual global supply from 2009. If worldwide demand continues at its current pace, where is the extra metal going to come from? This alone tells us the price of silver will move higher.

The next item I sleuthed out was that the US Mint is expected to release a new five-ounce Silver Bullion coin this year, the first ever. The coin will be three inches in diameter and have a composition of .999 fine silver.

I've read the five-ounce bullion coins will be near-exact replicas of the America the Beautiful quarters. There will reportedly be five different designs, and the mint plans to produce 100,000 of each. I can't wait to see them.

The coins will be classified as bullion, meaning they should be available to the same dealers already authorized by the mint. This will likely create excitement in the silver market, especially when you consider its affordability. At $23 silver, the five-ounce Silver Bullion coin will cost $115, plus premium. One ounce of gold runs $1340 as I write, while five ounces will cost you $6,700 plus commission.

Perhaps most bullish is the fact that silver is vastly underpriced when compared to gold. Look at it this way: gold is currently priced 57% above its 1980 nominal high of $850; silver would have to more than double to reach its 1980 nominal high of $48.70. And that's excluding any inflation-adjusted calculation. Yes, silver's spike was partly a direct result of hoarding by the Hunt Brothers, but my question to the skeptics is this: what's keeping us from seeing similar stockpiling today? What if there are several Hunt Brothers out there?

It's true that central banks don't buy and store physical Silver Bars anymore, so one source of demand that's common for gold isn't present for silver. But let's keep things in perspective: demand for all forms of silver is rising, and we see no reason the trend won't continue. And with indicators like decreasing supply from China and increased attention from a new bullion coin, I say the big picture on the Silver Price is extremely bullish.

This silver sleuth says, Buy Silver on the next dip. There's lots of reasons, I believe, you won't regret it.

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Why Buy Gold for Inflation Defense?

Wheat and cotton are rising in price. But they're an impractical inflation hedge...

AS ALWAYS seems the case, there is a big different between what the government statistics are reporting and what's going on in the real world, writes Jake Weber, editor of The Casey Report.

According to the most recent inflation reading published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), consumer prices grew at an annual rate of just 1.1% in August.

The government has an incentive to distort CPI numbers, for reasons such as keeping the cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security payments low. While there's no question that you may be able to get a good deal on a new car or a flat-screen TV today, how often are you really buying these things? When you look at the real costs of everyday life, prices have risen sharply over the last year. For simplicity's sake, consider the cash market prices on some basic commodities.

On average, our basic food costs have increased by an incredible 48% over the last year (measured by wheat, corn, oats, and canola prices). From the price at the pump to heating your stove, energy costs are up 23% on average (heating oil, gasoline, natural gas). A little protein at dinner is now 39% higher (beef and pork), and your morning cup of coffee with a little sugar has risen by 36% since last October.

You probably aren't buying new linens or shopping for copper piping at the hardware store every day, but I included these items to show the inflationary pressures on some other basic materials that will likely affect consumer prices down the road.

The jump in gold and Silver Prices illustrates that it's not just supply and demand issues driving the precious metals higher – the decline in purchasing power of the Dollar is also showing up in the price of physical goods. It is because stashing wheat and cotton in the garage is an impractical way to protect purchasing power that investors are increasingly looking to protect themselves with the monetary metals – a trend that is now very much in motion.

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Central Banks Pushing Up Gold

Gold Prices are finding strong support from a dramatic turn in global central-bank policy...

FOR SOME YEARS now, Doug Casey has gone on record with his view that we'll know the gold bull market is really picking up steam when central banks stop selling their reserves of gold and begin buying the stuff, writes David Galland, managing director of Casey Research.

The following excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article titled "As Gold Hits Record, Central Banks in Focus" indicates that this is now happening...

"The metal has surged over worries about Europe's debt woes and the slumping value of the Euro. Investors in metals and currency markets have been on alert for any sign that the world's central banks, and China in particular, are shifting reserves out of the Euro and into gold.

"Though central banks typically are coy about investment decisions, there have been signs lately that they might be shifting out of Euros and into gold."

A key point in this discussion has to do with the Central Bank Gold Agreement under which signatories were allowed to sell 400 tonnes of gold – 14.11 million ounces – annually.

According to the World Gold Council, in 2007 the central banks took advantage of the CBGA to sell on the order of 484 tonnes of gold. In 2008 the number began dropping – to 232 tonnes, followed by a miserly 41 tonnes in 2009, just 1.44 million ounces, or 10% of the amount sold two years before.

And at the same time the banks stopped selling, they began buying...a net 200 tonnes last year and almost certainly more than that in 2010. Thus, we have a swing in demand of some 600 tonnes, or 21 million ounces annually...an amount equal to about 30% of new Gold Mining supply.

This, of course, is a two-edged sword, because, in sum, the central banks, IMF, and the Bank for International Settlements hold some 29,000 tonnes of gold. If push came to shove and the central banks were forced to defend their currencies by selling off their gold reserves, it could have a serious detrimental effect on the Gold Price.

Using the struggling Eurozone as an example, if you added together the official gold reserves of the European Central Bank, Germany, Italy, and France, you'd arrive at a total of 8,791 tonnes of gold available to be delivered to the market. Converted into a more commonly used and understood unit of measure, 8,791 tonnes equals 310 million ounces.

Now that seems like a lot of Gold Bullion, and no question it is. Keeping things simple, at $1000 per ounce, the European central banks are sitting on gold reserves worth $310 billion. So one might be tempted to think that the European central banks could begin to view this very tangible asset as an important part of the solution to the sovereign debt crisis now bedeviling them.

However, when you consider that Italian government debt alone comes to $1.91 trillion and is closing in on $8 trillion for all the Eurozone, it becomes clear that selling their gold would have little real effect. And, of course, selling off their gold reserves would announce for all to see that the sovereigns were nothing more than hollowed-out shells, their currencies dried husks ready to be blown away by the next puff of wind.

Staying on topic, with 8,133 tonnes of gold in its reserves, the United States rates as the world's largest sovereign holder. In fact, as of March 2010, gold made up 70% of official US reserves. Pretty good, eh? But with total US currency and gold reserves around $410 billion – and total US government debt, not including unfunded obligations, coming in to $14 trillion – total reserves as a percentage of US debt is just 2.9%. And the gold component of those reserves, as a percentage of total government debt, equals 2.2%.

I think the technical term is "a drop in the bucket".

Even so, one doesn't want to be naïve about these things – 29,000 tonnes of gold is roughly the equivalent of seven years' supply. Which is another way of saying that it would be a mistake to completely discount the possibility that desperate governments won't eventually attempt to dump their gold to defend their currencies, as counterproductive as that might be, given that it would send the price sharply lower.

For the time being, however, the central banks are net buyers – and so they are very supportive to the Gold Price.

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Popular Economic Delusions

Trusting politicians to run the currency and economy responsibly...

SCANNING through my local paper this week, writes David Galland of Casey Research, I came across a letter to the editor that speaks volumes about the popular misconceptions that are dragging this country, and the world, to its knees.

The letter writer, a retired public school teacher, unleashed a litany of solutions for making America's children better citizens. Summarizing his list (the exclamation points are his, too):

• Give parents a livable wage!
• Provide excellent subsidized childcare!
• Guarantee parental leave with full pay and wage protection.
• Institute a single-payer health care system.

Regrettably, the gentleman's perfect-world vision of how things should work is not his alone, but is widely shared. Unfortunately for him and his demanding ilk, it is a vision now made obsolete by the facts on the ground.

Simply, the nation – and most of the so-called developed world – is broke. As is the model that these modern-day economies have been built on – a model that foolishly assumed that politicians could be trusted to manage a currency in a responsible fashion.

Consider, in the 1940s central bank reserves were 70% in Gold Bullion. Today, official reserves are only about 10% gold, even though the price of gold is far higher. The balance of those reserves, for all intents and purposes, is nothing more than IOUs.

Out of a justifiable fear of being repetitious, I'm not going to belabor the point. But I am going to comment that it's time for people to grow up...to get real about the situation we are in.

To believe that a government that produces nothing can paper over every crisis, as well as provide succor and sustenance to meet every human desire, and can do so infinitely and without a serious consequence, is to believe in tooth fairies and magical beasts that dance through distant woods.

Even so, like the letter writer, there is still a large block of Americans who persist in believing in such a fantastical world – a world where government's largess should be extended even further. From this crowd you would get rousing cheers to the suggestion that the state should also provide a free and top-notch education to all, quality foodstuffs for both the domestic and foreign needy, high-quality computers (and free Internet connectivity) to every young student, housing subsidies, and open-ended unemployment benefits. And that's just the short-list.

Back in the real world, the declarative statement "I want" has to now be followed with "and here's how I'll be able to save up for it." That's because even a casual glance at the nation's finances confirms that the government's fiscal, monetary, and social policies have been an abject failure... an unmitigated disaster.

While I could illustrate that contention with enough citations to fill a large book, in the interest of brevity I'll point only to an excerpt from a Globe & Mail article today on the dire state of California's finances, a fast-moving crisis that can be considered the off-Broadway version of the larger drama now playing out in these United States...

"It's a story that's being repeated all across California – and throughout the United States – as cash-strapped state and local governments grapple with collapsed tax revenues and swelling budget gaps. Mass layoffs, slashed health and welfare services, closed parks, crumbling superhighways and ever-larger public school class sizes are all part of the new normal...

"California's fiscal hole is now so large that the state would have to liberate 168,000 prison inmates and permanently shutter 240 university and community college campuses to balance its budget in the fiscal year that begins July 1.

"None of this would matter much to anyone outside the not-so-Golden State except that California's budget crisis is a harbinger of a grim dilemma that all Americans will soon confront. The country has built an elaborate and costly government machine, tied to a regressive tax system that can't generate enough revenue to pay for it all."

Naturally, we want to think of America as America the beautiful. Taking off the rose-tinted glasses, however, presents a different image altogether...that of a bankrupt, highly militarized, and hair-triggered socialist empire that is daily finding new ways to tax its struggling citizenry and tramp all over the Constitution.

Not to be overly dramatic, but the real face of America is increasingly like that of an early-middle-aged woman I saw the other day. She was wheelchair bound, with only one leg, her overweight body covered in poorly rendered tattoos. With a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, she rolled out of a liquor store, a telling brown paper bag in her lap. In other words, the very picture of a life dominated by bad decisions.

While America hasn't yet been laid so low, it would be a mistake to think it can't – and won't – happen. If its leaders and a majority of the population persist in their ignorance of the causes and effects of economic failure, it is all but certain.

And it's not just economics. Over the weekend I re-read both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, and it struck me that if the Founding Fathers were alive today, they would be considered terrorists and rounded up. Furthermore, because the Bill of Rights has been all but voided at this point, they might be dropped into the equivalent of a dark hole with no right to a speedy trial, or any trial at all, for that matter.

Trading our freedoms for security is a bad decision because, in the end, the nation will be neither free nor secure. Much in the same way that, to paraphrase one sage, a government that habitually saves all fools from their bad decisions, ultimately creates a nation of fools.

Fools that, like the letter writer, are clearly not self-made but rather look to the coddling nanny-state to guarantee an agreeable lifestyle. By virtue of the massive wealth that its post-WWII hegemony provided the United States, the nation's finances could support – for a time – an increasing crowd of moochers. But that wealth is now gone, leaving in its place the world's largest debtor.

And so it is that in the world now emerging, one where reality trumps fantasy, when talk turns to further stimulus, the conversation should no longer revolve around the ways that the government can prime the economic pumps with yet more borrowing and spending. That's how we got here in the first place, and a sure road map to an even worse catastrophe.

The continued failures of the government's misguided efforts can be seen in the latest bad news on the housing market – bad news we warned subscribers to The Casey Report to expect for months now.

"June 23 (Bloomberg) – Purchases of new homes in the US fell in May to a record low as a tax credit expired, showing the market remains dependent on government support.

"Sales collapsed a record 33 percent to an annual pace of 300,000 last month from April, less than the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and the fewest in data going back to 1963, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. Demand in prior months was revised down."

In the new world, the conversation should – must – turn to the proven ways that government can stimulate the economy; mostly by removing itself and its tax and regulatory burdens from as many areas of the economy as possible.

The world is only going to get more competitive – witness Russia's decision to eliminate capital gains taxes on foreign investment in that country – and an America dominated by a government lacking all fiscal restraint, urged on by a populace without even a basic understanding of economics, has little chance at remaining in contention. The situation is only made worse by a weakening of the rule of law, concurrent with a regulatory jungle that is only growing more tangled by the day.

Unfortunately, Paul Krugman, reigning champion of the crowd calling for saving the economy by pumping out yet more unbacked government stimulus, is now being trotted out as a possible replacement for the soon-to-be-vacated job of White House budget director. If he secures the position, then all may not be lost, but it soon will be.

The outlook isn't rosy – but there are still things you can do to protect your assets. Betting on rising interest rates is one of them.

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Asking Again: Is Gold in a Bubble?

Bubble, schmubble! Stocks are vulnerable, bonds are toast, currencies are fiat...

SO A FEW mainstream news outlets are coming around to at least acknowledging gold's stellar run, says Jeff Clark, senior editor of Doug Casey's Gold & Resource Report.

But most remain skeptical or outright bearish. And the blasphemy they purport is that gold is in a bubble.

Let's settle it, right now, and shut these naysayers up.

Gold returned 10 (and as much as 14) times your money in the 1970s bull market. Twenty years later, the Nasdaq advanced over 1,900% during its run.

Our current Gold Price is up about 400% (when measured on a daily basis, not monthly as in the chart). And in fact, the Nasdaq gained 182% in the final year of its peak, while gold surged 80% in four weeks during the blow-off top of January 1980.

None of this is (yet) happening to our current Gold Price. So a note to doubters: we've got a long way to go before we start legitimately using the "bubble" word.

Besides, the fact that these skeptics aren't buying gold – and don't even own any gold in the first place – is further proof we're not in a bubble. Ever notice none of them claim to own it?

And they definitely need to catch up on world affairs. The World Gold Council (WGC) reported that Russia, Venezuela, the Philippines, and Kazakhstan all bought gold in the first quarter. Central bank sales, meanwhile, remain depressed.

Russian President Medvedev won't quit his quest to move international reserve assets away from the dollar. And his country's central bank is backing up his words; it increased its gold reserves by $1.8 billion and decreased its currency reserves by $6.6 billion so far this year.

China, the world's largest gold producer, already buys all the gold produced within its country. But the WGC recently forecasted that overall gold consumption in China could double in the coming decade, a demand that production certainly won't be able to match.

The Iran/Israel showdown appears closer almost every week. As further evidence that each side is preparing for conflict, Saudi Arabia recently agreed to permit Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran – all done with the agreement of the U.S government. Simultaneously, the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran. Nobody appears to be backing down.

And the current run in gold is with no inflation. Core CPI has fallen to the lowest level since the mid-1960s – but what happens when inflation does set in? And what if it's as bad or worse as the 14% rate we got in the '70s? Sure, deflation is the immediate concern, but with a US federal debt of $13 trillion, unfunded future liabilities exceeding $50 trillion, and a current budget deficit of over 10% of GDP, a massive debasement of the dollar is virtually ensured, triggering an onslaught of inflation. It's coming.

With all these concerns, these guys don't want to Buy Gold?

Bubble, schmubble. Stocks are vulnerable, bonds are toast, currencies are fiat. Other than cash, where are you going to put money right now?

Gold could correct, of course, and I frankly hope it does. I'm not counting on it, though. The price is just as likely to head the other direction. But if it does temporarily fall, while the bubble-heads are smirking, I'll be buying.

Someday I think we'll be reversing roles.

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Double Dip? Policy’s Spent

Double-dip recession risk is growing, but policy tools to fight it are already spent...

TALK OF A double-dip recession is increasing, writes Alex Daley, senior editor at Casey Research.

US home sales have dropped like a brick since the end of the special tax breaks for buyers. Weekly job reports are showing much larger rises in unemployment claims than previously expected – 427,000 new filings in just the last weekly report.

The problem this time around, however, is not just the economy itself. The problem is that our supposed saviors are all out of tools to help the economy climb out of the deep, dark hole we now find it in.

The tool belt of any monetary regime is limited to begin with. Nothing more than loosening up the debt purse strings with unrestrained interest rate policy and some additional lending from the central coffers to add to liquidity. These tools are the economic equivalent of performing reconstructive dentistry with a sledgehammer and monkey wrench:

Effective, but not exactly precise.

And as Goldman Sachs recently pointed out to a number of its clients, the world's leading developed nations have all but exhausted the few tools available to them:

Interest rates in the top 10 economic nations are hovering just above zero, and it's not like they can go any lower than that, as much as banks would welcome having to pay back less than they borrow.

Government debt is meantime spiraling from out-of-control to just plain ridiculous. And all at a time when revenues are dropping from the slowdown and creditors, having been burned a little by Greece and afraid of what's to come with Spain, Italy, Ireland, California, New York, and others, are starting to raise red flags to the borrow-and-spend policies of our collective governing bodies.

For the first time in a long time, developed governments in Europe and the US face the specter of sub-AAA credit ratings and rapidly rising costs of borrowing more (ratings that, frankly, had they been put in place by the inept agencies years ago when they were initially deserved may have had repercussions that would have helped us avoid many of today's problems). Between rising borrowing costs, the already hefty budgetary burden of paying prior debt interest, and the ever-expanding rolls of government employees, legislators can hardly keep up on the bills these days, let alone inject any more into the economy.

The irony, of course, is that by unloading a full clip from the assault rifle when trying to "save" the economy, the governments of the OECD nations have actually created a catch-22 situation. One wherein they not only have no tools left to manipulate the markets against a further slowdown, but also where they have created monetary policy so extreme that undoing it would be more disastrous than the fallout would have been had they not intervened in the first place.

Austerity budgets from Greece and Spain have included massive layoffs of government rank and file, severe wage cuts, or both, potentially reducing tax revenues and consumer spending. California is following suit with its proposed 23,000 teacher layoffs, which are arriving on the back of 30,000 previous layoffs just last year. New Jersey is furloughing tens of thousands of state workers and capping raises. NY is furloughing 100,000 more and needs to cut $9.2 billion from the budget still.

As the walking bankrupt states and cities continue their budget slashing – down from criminally high levels such as Miami, where the average city worker nets $76,000/year compared to the $29,000 average for private citizens of the metropolis – it will only exacerbate the returning slowdown. Fewer households with cash to spend in the private sector. Rising mortgage defaults and foreclosures as the workers face the grim reality that a state paycheck doesn't come with a 30-year guarantee these days. Declining tax revenues at all levels. And more people on the already busting-at-the-seams federal unemployment files, which remain at all-time highs.

Speaking of the US federal government, their guaranties of Fannie and Freddie Mac loans are now estimated to cost anywhere from $250 billion to $1 trillion to taxpayers in the end, far above the net cost of any of the other bailout measures and potentially more than is possible to pay. The price tag is so steep, many conservatives are starting to call for repealing the institutions' charters altogether and letting the private market have at them. The US federal government is simply buried over its head in obligations.

The government is all tapped out. And yet the economy continues to slow.

If you are among the camp who wished the government would have never stepped in to begin with and called out the seemingly obvious truth that they could only worsen the situation by flailing so wildly to contain it – the double dip is coming, and you are about to be proven right and get your wish at the same time.

It's the price we are all about to pay for letting our politicians get away with budgetary murder year after year, including letting them try to "save" us the last time around.

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Afghanistan’s Trillion-Dollar Mineral “Discovery”

300-to-1 against that it ain't gold in them thar hills...
GEOLOGICAL ANOMALIES are like opinions, writes Louis James, senior editor of Doug Casey's International Speculator.

Everybody has one. And there's been a great deal of chatter in the press and online about the tremendous $1 trillion mineral "discovery" in Afghanistan headlined by The New York Times recently...

"So far, the biggest mineral deposits discovered are of iron and copper, and the quantities are large enough to make Afghanistan a major world producer of both, United States officials said. Other finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, rare earth elements and large gold deposits in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan...

"American geologists working with the Pentagon team [also] have been conducting ground surveys on dry salt lakes in western Afghanistan where they believe there are large deposits of lithium. Pentagon officials said that their initial analysis at one location in Ghazni Province showed the potential for lithium deposits as large of those of Bolivia, which now has the world's largest known lithium reserves..."

Most of the ensuing discussion seems to centre on whether or not this is really news and whether or not the NYT was played by the powers that be for purposes of their own. Few, if any, people seem to be questioning the value of the so-called discovery itself. Yet the $1 trillion figure, at best, cannot be anything more than the wildest of hopeful guesses.

One does not have to be a geologist or an engineer to understand why. When geologists find outcropping mineralization, or other signs that an economic deposit of minerals may be present, that is not called a discovery. Even if the signs come from the latest scientific equipment flown over the country, as the US government appears to have used, the result is still just an anomaly: a hopeful indication of where to look.

Once an anomaly is identified, it takes extensive and very expensive field work to determine the best locations for drilling holes in the ground, which you have to do to calculate a volume of mineralized rock, from which you can estimate the metal contained. It usually takes at least a year, and often several, to identify targets for drilling. And drilling off a deposit of any significant size takes several more years, usually after many false starts and setbacks, because you can't see through rock to know where the goods are.

But even after you drill off a deposit, and know how big it is, how deep it is, and roughly what's in it, you still don't know what it's worth. For that, you have to conduct extensive testing on the mineralized material, not just to quantify the metals or other desirable minerals within but also to see if there are contaminants, or other elements present that can complicate, or even make impossible the economic recovery of the valuable mineral.

In short, until you know how much it would cost to mine and process any sort of mineralized material into a saleable product, like Gold Bars, copper concentrate, etc., you cannot say what it's worth. Even a huge deposit of gold may be completely worthless if the grade is low and there's lots of carbon that would mess up the gold recovery.

Now, back to Afghanistan. A "small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists" cannot possibly have drilled off these deposits, let alone done the engineering required to value them. At very best, they've spotted some outcrops and taken some samples. This is not a discovery – no serious exploration geologist would call anything a discovery until enough holes have been drilled into it to outline a significant volume of potentially economic material.

What we have here is a regional survey that may or may not lead to significant discoveries. So where do they get the trillion-dollar figure? We can only guess, but given their own description, they cannot have done the work necessary to generate any reasonable estimate.

It's worth pointing out that the vast majority of mineral outcroppings and other anomalies never lead to economic discoveries, much less mines. Even a very rich vein sticking right out on surface can turn out to be the last dregs of a system that has been eroded away, leaving nothing but a tease behind. For gold, the odds of an anomaly leading to an economic discovery are often cited as being on the order of 300 to one against.

No responsible geologist would circulate a valuation figure at this stage of the process in Afghanistan. In fact, if a public company put out a press release like this story in the NYT, the exchange would likely reprimand it severely and require a retraction.

Now, the soldier quoted admits that "There are a lot of ifs", but that does not excuse putting out the $1 trillion figure, a number that cannot be reasonably supported at this point. No, this doesn't mean the minerals are not there – Afghanistan has, for obvious reasons, not seen any modern exploration, or even antiquated exploration, for decades. It is, in all likelihood, a terrific place to look for minerals. But the government's story sounds like the sort of PR stunt put out by Pink Sheet scammers.

It will take time for any real discoveries to be made, especially given the time required to draft a workable mining law and for physical security to be established in the country. It would be a great benefit to the people of Afghanistan, and of the world, if this would happen.

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